Armwrestling the Dead

by Andrew McEwan

wouldn’t like the idea. He mentioned that.

  ‘Smith! Are you scared of him, Stewart? Is that it? Well, I’m not. He pulls no rank.’

  ‘It’s not a question of rank. Be realistic for once, ay?’

  She laced her fingers, smeared her palms. ‘Yes?’

  ‘If we can convince him. Convince them both.’

  ii

  The fact people kept talking in terms of damage suggested to Issac that war had encapsulated the planet, where in reality the snowmen were responsible for everything. His mechanical fingers itched to be at engines. His grizzled expression silently addressed those around him strapping auxiliary fueltanks to the wing he had flown for hours that morning, familiarizing himself with its controls. Presently he sat in Ula’s truck, Ula scribbling notes, board resting against the wheel, pencil attached by a length of frayed string so thin in places it must shortly snap. He looked down at her ankles. Somebody shouted outside and Ula complained at the disturbance.

  They were sending him on a quest. He liked to think of it as that. The sun hurt his eyes, but they’d provided goggles strung on elastic round his neck. He wore thick tan trousers and shirt, had a coat which reached to his knees and boots whose tops met its hem.

  A man approached his door, limping, head tilted back to peer in the window Issac next lowered. They stared at each other but exchanged no words. Issac was tired of words. The man was known to him, he felt sure.

  Ula said something he missed. The man smiled and limped away.

  ‘Issac.’ Tapping his wrist.

  He turned from the window.

  ‘Issac, is there anything you want to ask? Anything you’re not clear about?’

  His mind went momentarily blank. Illusory animals flashed before his eyes. These fantastic creatures of colour and light were known to him also.

  ‘You want me to find the man with my name,’ he said eventually.

  She gazed at him sadly.

  ‘And bring him to you,’ Issac went on; ‘in a box if necessary.’

  ‘What? Who told you that?’ She was angry, breaking the string without noticing. The board slapped the wheel.

  ‘You did,’ he said.

  ‘No!’ Ula shook herself. ‘I mean...the part about the box. Who said that?’

  He had to think where he’d heard it. ‘Smith.’

  She got out of the truck, rattling its door and sending shockwaves through the cab.

  Issac didn’t know what to do, so he sat reading her notes, the board having slipped to the seat.

  iii

  ‘Retardation! Stewart, how do you expect him to function after Smith’s fucked with his brain?’

  ‘Come on. He’s fine. Plenty of spare capacity.’

  Ula took deep breaths. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? Or was that part of the deal?’

  He fumbled for cigarettes. ‘It was that or terminate him as a security risk. You know how paranoid Smith is. He’s never accepted our work as being possessed of anything but novelty value. And now Mother’s gone, cutting the ground from under him, maybe even exposing the reason he failed to secure a captaincy - well, he’s had his nose rubbed in it, that’s all. He’s not alone in looking for someone to blame.’

  ‘Smith was up for captaincy?’ It pained her to say the words.

  Stewart nodded.

  ‘Christ.’

  ‘Yeah. But that’s history. I’d watch your step around him, Ula, okay?’

  She hated this world. She scraped her feet across its unnerving superficies.

  Later, Waters dispatched to an unknown end, she sat down with Monk, who said, ‘I know, I know; you’re in the wrong place; want to be somewhere else.’

  ‘I can’t help myself.’

  ‘But I might be able to.’ His head bobbed rhythmically as he shuffled.

  She folded her arms on the table and crossed her legs under the chair.

  ‘Don’t you like me?’

  He dropped the three of spades. Staring at her, he replaced the card in the deck.

  ‘Heard from your brother lately?’ she asked.

  Monk put the cards down.

  ‘You can’t figure it out, can you? You just don’t see what I’m getting at.’

  ‘I plant trees,’ he said. ‘Your hands stay clean in the lab. We both make things grow, and yet mine is a lowly task and yours the work of gods.’

  She laughed. He made her do that. ‘I like you, Monk. I do. You’re uncomplicated. I think we’re made for each other.’

  The worried look was exactly what she’d anticipated.

  ‘Are you with me now?’

  He picked up the deck and dealt five cards. ‘My father planted trees on Eriksworld and Hadada,’ he said, studying the hand. ‘Dealer takes three.’ She grabbed the pack and counted three off. ‘He met my mother on a bus. She was a specialist in fungi.’

  ‘A parasite?’

  Monk fanned out his cards, face down. ‘I think you’re bluffing,’ he told her.

  ‘So call me.’

  iv

  The work detail Zonda had been assigned to was responsible for exits. She had a handgun strapped to her hip and liked the feel of it, the snug plastic of the holster, the ceramic of the weapon balancing her mescaline appetite. She was on a permanent high. Gazing around at the weather the former Runner nipped her tongue between her teeth and tasted power. Ekland had pointed at her from across a blank space, a floor naked of furniture, hers two feet among hundreds, his callused digit finding the narrow bridge separating her eyes. Later she learned that was his trigger finger, steady as it marked an X on her brow. The sun bathed her and the crew manhandling a heavy support, part of its honeycombed structure twisted, made to fit anew. Already the landing field was back in use, bulldozed of eerie phantoms. Planes were constantly landing and taking off. Flying north and south, she guessed, photographing the outlying bases and survey stations, assessing damage and displaying light cannon, transmissions scrambled, wings and bodies daubed in clashing hues, panchromatic dragons not all of which returned to their mountain nest. The losses were predictable, not through combat but defection, pilots either flying direct or being ditched by crews over land and sea. Ruby was doubtless happy to let them go. They were less of a threat that way. The majority, Runner and Weekender alike, had simply recognized the new order and got on with the business of recovery. Zonda’s sidearm was likely to remain where it was. A yellow neckerchief more effectively denoted her independent status.

  There were a number of dead, buried without ceremony on the mountain’s northern slope, its gradient lessened, eroded by the storm. Southward the ocean appeared at once closer and farther away. On every side the weight of bergs was numbing. They lay scattered like enormous potsherds, the wreckage of Oriel’s opaque ceiling. Designs, fractured reliefs, patterns from myriad ages littered the surface, colouring as they absorbed heat and light, changing shape and exuding gases. Zonda viewed the many forms and compared them to previous hallucinations: grazing sheep and cattle, ruined temples, ancient forts and dwellings, the decayed remains of forgotten cultures piled one atop another. Fragments alien and enchanting, they worked their latent magic on the eye, liquid-state dream-engines whose lazy melting produced a rich panorama of imagery, the shadows they clung to deceptive, cunning, adding depth and tone to the picture, smoothing and etching still deeper the wonderful array of conjured artefacts her unblinking vision inverted on her brain.

  v

  The orange square tied like a bandanna round his head, Irdad ventured above ground. Candy was alive with teeming insects, human imagines performing as their queen instructed. The analogy brought a smile; one Joplinski wouldn’t approve of, but a smile none the less. The orange marked him out as a lieutenant of this feudal lord, the usurper having acted quickly to consolidate his victory. No great feat, Irdad thought. The company’s tiered solidity aided Ruby, but his removal of its higher echelons was a shrewd manoeuvre. Obvious by definition, the scenario was one played out many times b
efore. Not that the Weekender would necessarily know of the precedents, historical and corporative, or even of the narrow course of events to inevitably follow, a field from which fate would pick a winner.

  Irdad, safe for now in the saddle, riding in the new boss’s colours, wound his way to the summit. The view was equally breathtaking and repugnant. He slotted hands in armpits and gazed upon the snow, ideas as to the storm’s beginning orbiting like the space-dock overhead. He was relieved not to have been quizzed in any great detail about the disappearance of the captains. In truth he knew little, cognizant only that some major thinkers had been shifting nervously, political intrigue more Christian’s line than his. Irdad was curious though, recalling the manner in which the screeching instruments had woken him, the chaos and resulting atmospherics, his partner’s illogic and his own determined flight before the storm. He remained convinced the intrusive mass of a ship had penetrated, nothing short of that appealing lunacy being anything like sufficient to satisfy the exacting standards of the climatic disruption to follow. The storm was manmade by consequence. Maybe there was a purpose. The ship’s current whereabouts was a mystery he was keen to solve.

  He was being sent north by Joplinski.

  ‘What makes you think they’ll parley?’ he’d asked, uncomfortable with the use Joplinski wished him put to. ‘After all, if the wagon’s there - and it’s a big if - they’d be foolish to part with it.’

  ‘Oh, they’ll part with it. Not in exchange for hostages, perhaps, but part